Five Lessons Primrose Everdeen Learned the Hard Way
by FuneralCricket
Summary: Primrose Everdeen, in her life, learned a good few lessons. Here are five she learned the hard way.


Five Lessons Primrose Everdeen Learned the Hard Way

In all of life's trials and tribulations, joys and miseries, struggles, quirks and monotonies, and simple chaos, you have to learn a few things about life and this world. Some of those lessons are easy, and some are learned the hard way.

Primrose Everdeen, in her life, learned a good few lessons. Here are five she learned the hard way.

1. _Never_ is absolute—not one bit compromisable.

It's all such a blur and yet so painfully sharp in her mind. She was only seven years old. The sirens pounding against her eardrums. The bleak air biting through her meager sweater. The pushing and shoving of people, struggling to see their loved ones. The choking taste of mine dust in the air. The way Katniss broke down, sobbing, flinging herself against the ground, scrabbling her fingers through the ashes in the futile hope of reaching through miles and miles of stone and pulling their father to freedom. The hours slipping by in the dark, through the night. The firm refusal to yield to the temptress of sleep. Vowing to keep vigil until a glimmer of hope flickers. The unfamiliar hands placing a blanket around her shoulders, putting something hot in her hands. The slight paling of the sky, indicating that dawn is near. And finally, the dreaded list of the casualties read by the mine captain.

All of these details have branded themselves in her memory permanently. They haunt her dreams, taunting her _never, never, never_. Everything about that day seems to hiss _never, never, never_. And she learned the hard way what _never_ means.. Her father, no matter how much she begs and pleads and sobs, will _never_ return.

_Never_ is absolute—it cannot compromise.

2. Love is an incomprehensible force—inextinguishable by conventional methods.

She never really understands how much Katniss loves her until after their father's death. Katniss takes over as head of the family, tries to make the money last as long as possible. She goes into the marketplace, into that scary marketplace where Prim never dared venture. She spends hours trekking through the rain. And whatever little she scrounges up, she gives the better part to Prim, a sizable amount for their mother, and takes the scraps for herself.

Every day Prim suspects Katniss will have given up. But it takes a lot more than rain and their father's death to extinguish Katniss's love for her family.

When the money finally runs out, and a shadow passes over Prim's face, Katniss doesn't weep. Steel sets her face. She hugs her little sister with the strength she can muster, then digs through the drawers of old clothes, searching for something, anything. She takes out Prim's old baby clothes, saying, I'll come back soon, keep mother safe.

Katniss is gone for hours. Smoke chokes the room, from the fireplace with the damp branches from the edge of the fence. Mother lies huddled under the blanket, lost in her own world. Prim sits tense in a chair, her stomach aching with hunger, an ache as constant as her beating heart. Rain pounds on the house harder and harder, the wind picking up. Every moment she expects Katniss will return, her hands empty.

But Katniss comes back, with bread. Prim claps her hands and hugs her sister. And a month later, on May 8th, Katniss turns twelve and signs up for her first tesserae. Prim gives her the toy wagon to pull back the grain and oil. Prim says, "You're so brave Katniss. Putting your name in for the rest of us. When I turn twelve, I'll put my name in too, so you don't have to."

Katniss snaps, "No! You're never taking out tesserae. I swear, I won't allow it!" She hugs Prim tightly, fiercely.

Five years later, Prim is twelve, finally. Her first reaping. True to her word, Katniss has taken out tesserae again, her name in twenty times. Prim's name is in once. Still, that doesn't prevent her name being the one pulled from the bowl.

When Katniss volunteers, Prim realizes just how much her sister loves her. Nothing will stop Katniss from protecting her little sister—not their father's death, not their mother's abandonment, not poverty, not starvation, not rain, not even the Hunger Games.

Love is an incomprehensible force—inextinguishable by conventional methods.

3. Being the reason for someone else's pain is a torture of its own diabolical kind.

This lesson manifests itself to her during the Games. When she sees Katniss crawling along, dying from thirst, reduced to begging for water—_begging_, her dear strong sister reduced to _begging_—she is consumed with guilt, knowing that it could have been _her _on that screen dying from lack of water. But it's not her who's thirsty. It's Katniss. Suffering everything in the Games—tracker jacker stings, thirst, knives, arrows, deaf ears—all for her.

The curse of knowing that Katniss is out there, hurting for _her_, assaults her every second of the day. She feels like fate is playing with her, using her sister to torture her until she breaks. That's how it feels. She's literally _breaking_ under the weight of seeing her sister die for her.

She tells Katniss this much later, in District 13. She tells Katniss how Snow is using Peeta against her. And when Katniss asks her how, she gives the brutal answer, feeling like she's a thousand years old. "Whatever it takes to break you."

She regrets having to tell Katniss this. Prim watches her older sister torture herself with the question over the next few days trapped in the bunker. Now Katniss knows that Snow is torturing Peeta specifically to debilitate her. And it was bad enough thinking Peeta was being tortured for information, but being the reason for his pain is a torture of its own diabolical kind.

4. Sometimes, there is no side to be on. Sometimes, it's a cruel world, and all you have is yourself.

Prim worried before than there wouldn't be enough fire to fuel the revolution. That even with the berries and the mockingjay and the Games and, well, pretty much everything the Capitol has done to Panem, the war would not be strong enough. That people would not have enough motivation to fight.

All of that changes when she sees the District 8 propo.

She sees the people in the hospital, all in awe simply because of her sister's presence. For the first time she truly appreciates how important her sister is to the rebellion. How important the Mockingjay is. And she begins to think, maybe this war really could work.

That doesn't mean her misgivings are gone.

The propo cuts from Katniss visiting the wounded to the bombing of the hospital. She sees the Capitol dropping bombs on a building full of unarmed, dying people, simply to send a message to the rebels. Prim agrees viciously with her sister as she denies the need of a cross-fire.

But then she sees Katniss and Gale aiming arrows the planes that dropped the bombs. Aiming arrows without a second thought. And a seed of doubt begins to grow in her heart.

She sees the words IF YOU BURN, YOU BURN WITH US emblazoned across the background of flames, before they catch fire as well and the screen burns to blackness. She sees the propo, and sits down.

She tries to remind herself that the Capitol is evil, that they have starved their own citizens, murdered their own children for seventy-five years, and brutally oppressed their own country. And the rebels are working tirelessly to end that, to bring down the Capitol, to rebuild Panem with a better government. This is what Katniss says. This is what the propo says. This is what President Coin says. This is what everybody says. And after all, if an entire nation is saying it, it surely has to be true, doesn't it?

But…

She remembers Katniss ushering in her prep team, bloody and beaten from being chained up. She remembers helping her mother treat them. She remembers the justification being the theft of a few loaves of bread. And she remembers thinking to herself that they had grown up in the Capitol, the bare idea of starvation foreign to them, and they could hardly be blamed for being unprepared for Thirteen.

She thinks to herself, is this what the rebels are doing? Hacking their way mercilessly to the Capitol, not caring who dies in the process, consumed with a need for revenge?

She shoves the thought away. No. The rebels are fighting for the freedom of Panem, and the Capitol is fighting for the oppression of it. The rebels are good, and the Capitol is evil. It is as simple as that. Good versus evil. Black and white.

Then why can't she shake the feeling that in starting the revolution, they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire? It's an old expression her father used to tease her with, like when she spilled her milk and tried to clean it up, only to knock over Katniss's cup as well at the breakfast table. The Capitol is evil, yes, certainly. But are the rebels any better?

In the end, she has to conclude no.

In the end, she has to conclude that yes, they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

In the end, she has to conclude that in trying to clean up one milk spill, they have knocked over another.

And in the end, she has to conclude that even if they try to clean up that one in the process, they will knock over another, and then another, forever on and on.

Prim used to represent hope. Goodness, sweetness, and light, all the things that make life worth living. And it is true, yes, she once stood for those things.

But now, seeing life for what it really is, for the first time, Prim cannot anymore. There is no hope, not for herself, for the Capitol, for the rebels, for Panem. For human beings.

Prim never shares these worries with anyone. Although she knows that the rebellion is futile, she cannot bear to think this after her entire life has been a tragedy. But deep down, she thinks, nobody is truly fighting for good or for evil. Everyone is fighting for themselves.

There is no side to join. All there is a cruel world, and yourself.

5. Death isn't frightening—it's final.

Prim doesn't give up. Not right away. In desperation, she reminds herself of healing. What she has always loved. To her credit, she tried one last time to summon her power of healing and try to use it to represent hope.

She goes to the Capitol. She's not yet fourteen, but her skill in healing convinces Coin to allow her to go. She hugs her mother, tells her fiercely that she loves her and she will fight with all she's got.

On the hovercraft ride, Prim sits tense in her seat. She wants to convince herself that perhaps there is a good side and an evil side in this war. She wants so badly, so desperately, for this to work. For there to be hope for this world, for mankind to be salvageable. She thinks to herself, she doesn't _want_ this, she _needs_ this.

Life in the Seam has taught her very carefully what a need is and what a want is. And she knows that this is a need. It takes more than food and water to keep someone alive. She knows that if this doesn't work, then there will be no life for her. Just as there was no life for her mother after her father died. Hope.

They've been sneaked into the Capitol on a hovercraft with the Capitol seal. Prim takes her healing kit, puts on her rebel medic uniform. She can feel her blood pounding in her veins. This might work, she thinks. There might be hope.

The bombs are dropped, and Prim doesn't even bother to glare at the sky, to send one look of smoldering hatred at the planes that have dropped these parachutes. She runs and takes off her medical coat, wraps it around a girl with an arm blown off.

Then she hears her name. Faintly. She turns and she sees Katniss. What is _Katniss _doing here, of all places?

Prim glances up, expecting to see the bomber planes. And she sees the Capitol hovercraft.

_But… Isn't that the same hovercraft that snuck us in here? Then why did they drop the bombs?_

And then, she finally gets it. The rebels dropped these bombs, not caring that their own medics were there. They released these parachutes in the hopes of killing these children, blaming it on the Capitol, and ending the war quickly.

She knows now. There is no hope. Nothing. She turns back to her sister, yells her name. She knows she must tell her about the rebels. But she never gets the chance.

The bombs explode again.

In the last few seconds of her life, before the flames set her alight, she cannot summon any great sense of fear, weirdly enough. She expects to feel regret, perhaps—she never told Katniss the truth about the rebellion, humans will never truly find peace, she is going to die at the pitiful age of thirteen.

But no—instead, what she feels is a sense of finality. She can't feel scared. After years and years of trying to find some measure of hope, she is going to die. And after all she's been through, she's surprisingly okay with that.

The last lesson Primrose Everdeen learns in her lifetime. Death doesn't scare her. All she feels is an overwhelming sense of inevitability.

A laugh greets her ears when she awakens. A warm hug wraps around her. The old comforting smell of autumn leaves and shaving cream tickles her nose.

"Primrose, my darling. All the lessons you've learned," her father smiles.

She rubs her eyes and sits up, looking around. A huge crowd surrounds her, a loving smile on each face. Faces she knew in life, faces that are complete strangers to her. She smiles back and takes her father's hand.

Prim watches her family from above. She watches Katniss learn the truth from Snow, assassinate Coin, and return to Twelve with Haymitch and Peeta. She watches her mother leave to District 4, help at a hospital, and have minimal contact with her surviving daughter.

The few people she still loved by her death manage to carve out a little corner of peace for each of themselves. Katniss marries Peeta and has two children. District Twelve fills with people again, slowly. Gale and his family settle in District Two. Her mother becomes a nurse and much later in life, she returns to live with her daughter.

None of them ever experience true happiness or hope, however. They learn the lessons that Prim learned in her lifetime the hard way, as well.

Prim reflects on her life. Like every other lifetime, it had its trials and tribulations, joys and miseries, struggles, quirks and monotonies, and simple chaos. Her life was short, bitter, and brutal. During that time, was she every truly happy? Did she ever have faith once, that life could be good? On the delirious journey to the end, did she ever once have hope?

She has to conclude no. _But I learned a lot along the way_.


End file.
